535 
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a v n 




RELATION OF THE UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF 
AGRICULTURE TO THE AGRICULTURAL COL- 
LEGES AND EXPERIMENT STATIONS 

By B. T. Galloway 

Assistant Secretary of the United States 
Department of Agriculture 



WASHINGTON 
1913 






I OF 

.Pi t 






RELATION OF THE UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGRI- 
CULTURE TO THE AGRICULTURAL COLLEGES AND EXPERI- 
MENT STATIONS. 1 

By B. T. Galloway, 
Assistant Secretary of the United States Department of Agriculture. 

In any discussion of relationships between the Department of 
Agriculture and the State agricultural colleges and experiment 
stations we must necessarily deal with general principles. I shall 
therefore submit without undue argument certain principles as a 
basis for discussion, with the understanding that they are not final, 
but are more in the nature of suggestions for mutual understanding 
in the interest of agriculture as a whole. 

The primary interests of the Department of Agriculture lie in the 
fields of research, extension service, and regulatory matters. The 
primary interests of the agricultural colleges and stations lie in the 
fields of research, education, and extension. It thus appears that 
in the field of interstate regulatory matters, such as have to do with 
the inspection of meats and other food supplies, questions of quar- 
antine, including animals and plants, protection against adulterants 
and misbranding, etc., the department has practically a clear field. 
Even here, however, there is room for close relationships with State 
institutions in the matter of bringing about uniformity of action in the 
securing of laws and the enforcement of the same. As the land-grant 
colleges and State experiment stations are only incidentally concerned 
in such matters, we may pass the subject with nothing more than a 
reference to the need for unification of effort. The agricultural col- 
leges, on the other hand, have a clear field in the matter of educa- 
tional work, using the term "education" in the somewhat narrow 
sense of teaching adults through regular, prescribed courses of study. 

The department, the agricultural colleges, and the experiment 
stations are mutually interested in research and extension, and it 
is to these lines of work in particular that our principles should apply. 
Under existing organization, the States, by virtue of Federal and State 
authority, are empowered to do all the things that the department 
is empowered to do in the direction of research and extension. The 
inability of some of the States to do this work as thoroughly as 
others is due to lack of men and means rather than to lack of author- 

i An address delivered at the meeting of the Association of American Agricultural Colleges and Experi- 
ment Stations, Nov. 14, 1913. 

20653—3:3 1 



2 AGRICULTURAL COLLEGES AND EXPERIMENT STATIONS. 

ity. The Federal Government, owing to its close relations with the 
Congress and the fact that the funds appropriated for its activities 
do not represent a direct tax, has been in a better position to secure 
appropriations than the States, and hence has advantages in this 
respect. The States, on the other hand, are, or should be, in closer 
contact or sympathy with the farmers within their respective bor- 
ders and should be helped in every way to hold this sympathy and 
support. The problem is to bring about close and cordial relations, 
to strive at all times to keep the fields of endeavor defined through 
personal contact and mutual understanding on the part of the work- 
ers, and to develop a spirit of sympathy and helpfulness through 
actual constructive effort rather than through theoretic and aca- 
demic discussions. 

I will now endeavor to briefly set forth the leading principles which 
it would seem necessary to keep in mind in establishing relationships 
mutually helpful to all the institutions involved and in bringing 
about conditions making for the greatest good to the people for 
whom these institutions were established and are now maintained. 

(1) The States receiving Federal moneys should now and here- 
after recognize that the Department of Agriculture has responsi- 
bilities as to the proper expenditure of these moneys and must ren- 
der an account to Congress and to the people when called upon to 
do so. In other words, if the States seek and secure Federal funds, 
they should be willing to join with the department in developing 
and maintaining high standards of work and high standards of 
economy and efficiency in administration. 

(2) As a prerequisite to the future progress of agriculture in this 
country, the colleges, the experiment stations, and the Federal Gov- 
ernment should recognize that research is fundamental. The De- 
partment of Agriculture should concern itself with the broader re- 
gional problems in research, the States in general with the more re- 
stricted or local problems, and the colleges should be given an open 
field to develop an investigational atmosphere and to train research 
men. The field of research is so broad, the problems so numerous, 
and the present training so inadequate that we can hardly consider 
ourselves as having really entered upon the field. 

(3) Next to the discovery of truth through investigational effort 
is the problem of making it useful and applicable to the everyday 
affairs of life. How best to democratize our discoveries is the prob- 
lem we have now to consider. We submit in this principle (a) that 
the land-grant college is the institution within the State best equipped 
to handle the work; (b) that all work grouped under the general term 
"extension service," whether Federal or State, should be handled 
through such colleges; and (c)that, when Federal funds are involved, 
the work should be projected on purely cooperative lines, with the 
leadership centered in the college. 



AGEICULTUEAL COLLEGES AND EXFEEIMENT STATIONS. 3 

To lay down principles is comparatively simple and easy; to 
outline a plan for making them effective is more difficult. By any 
process the change must be slow. It will have to be by evolution. 
It can never be by passing laws and issuing pronunciamentos. 
Beginning where I am most familiar, I am convinced that we can 
not have that close and sympathetic relationship with the States 
without material modification of the organization of the Department 
of Agricuiture. 

Under our present organization we lack the power to coordinate. 
This difficulty exists in the department to a less degree, perhaps, 
than in most colleges and stations, but it exists nevertheless and 
should be remedied. In the early days of the department's work, 
when its organization was on a divisional basis, there was little need 
for coordination of effort. When the department, about 12 years 
ago, enlarged its opportunities by organizing on the basis of bureaus, 
there was relief for a time, as the field was broad and was not fully 
covered by any one branch of the department. As the work of the 
department has grown, however, it has become more and more evi- 
dent that there is a lack of elasticity, an insufficiency of latitude in 
undertaking and putting through important projects. The depart- 
ment has also been more or less handicapped in its efforts toward coor- 
dination, especially in matters of research, through the enormous 
amount of regulatory work that has been thrust upon it. Of all the 
money now appropriated for the use of the department, aggregating 
nearly $24,000,000 annually, nearly two-thirds is expended under the 
law for regulatory service. Regulatory work such as must be con- 
ducted by the department and research are incompatible. One is 
bound to suffer at the expense of the other, and as a rule research 
must give way to police duties. The large amount of regulatory work 
and the increasing demands for phases of extension work have made 
it difficult to bring about centralization of effort in a number of fields, 
and thus the bureaus have been left to work out their own plans, 
each without very much regard to what the other is doing, and I 
might say to what the country is doing. To this condition, which 
is patent to everyone who is familiar with the department, is due 
many of the difficulties we have experienced in the past in the matter 
of establishing and maintaining proper relationship with State 
workers. Young men come into the department, and before they 
have been properly trained go into the States and without knowl- 
edge of, and sometimes without full regard for, what the States 
have done and are doing, make statements and undertake lines 
of work which under proper supervision would not be permitted. 

As a first step, therefore, in the direction of placing the depart- 
ment in a position where it can render the best service to the country 
and at the same time extend that sympathy and helpful support to 
the States which they require, it is believed that the existing bureau 



4 AGRICULTURAL COLLEGES AND EXPERIMENT STATIONS. 

organization should be changed and that in lieu thereof we should 
develop an organization according to service rendered. This would 
tend to remove the lines of division between bureaus and permit 
the grouping of all of our work on a project basis. It would mean 
that we should have in the department an organization involving 
five or six main groups, such as a research service, a rural-organization 
service, a State-relation service, a weather service, a forest service, 
and a regulatory service. 

Under the research service we would group those lines of activity 
having to do with plant industry and animal industry, agricultural 
surveys, soil physics, and chemistry, entomology, and nutrition. 
Close points of contact would be immediately established between 
the men engaged in research work on crops and those engaged in 
research work on animals. The various surveys would be made to 
fit in with projects having to do with crop production, the industrial 
utilization of plant products, the utilization of animal products, etc. 

The rural-organization service would deal with questions of organi- 
zation for social purposes, for production, for marketing, or for 
purchasing, rural finances, farm credits, farm accounting, farm in- 
surance, land tenures, etc. It would also deal in general terms with 
the fundamentals of rural education, agricultural forecasts, and 
estimates (or crop reporting), rural sanitation, farm management, 
and home management. 

The State-relations service would endeavor, by the exchange of 
project plans, the organization of committees, and team work 
generally, to extend and broaden the relations between the depart- 
ment, the State agricultural colleges, the State experiment stations, 
and other State institutions doing agricultural work. The general 
planning and coordinating of all of the extension-service work would 
fall within this group of projects. 

The Weather Service would remain practically as it is to-day, 
with the exception that the agricultural climatological work would 
be handled under the research service. 

The Forest Service would be an administrative organization having 
for its object the maintenance, protection, and management of the 
National Forests. It would also handle such questions as may be 
involved in the acquisition of lands and the protection of navigable 
streams. 

Under the regulatory service would be grouped the various im- 
portant lines of work now scattered throughout the entire depart- 
ment, including the enforcement of the food and drugs act and the 
enforcement of the meat-inspection laws, the handling of serums and 
viruses, insecticides and fungicides, plants and seeds, animal and 
plant quarantine matters, the inspection of export animals, game 
protection, grain standardization, cotton standardization, and similar 
lines of work. 



AGRICULTURAL COLLEGES AND EXPERIMENT STATIONS. 5 

The basic idea running through this plan is coordination, the 
development of a feeling of mutual interest, and the encouragement 
of team work all along the line. 

Experience has led us to believe that the development and organi- 
zation of work along comparatively small units, each unit being 
more or less interrelated with other units, will bring the highest 
and best results, not only in research but in the application of re- 
search. All of our institutions are more or less prone to follow 
the idea of grouping activities according to methods rather than 
according to objects to be accomplished. We are coming more and 
more to understand in the department that any attempt to establish 
arbitrary divisional lines between branches of work will eventually 
lead to stagnation and frequently to actual conflict of interests. 
In all such cases where arbitrary divisional lines are established and 
maintained, the personnel must spend a considerable part of their time 
in policing their domains. We are all prone to wall ourselves in or 
attempt to wall others out, and the construction and defense of walls 
takes both time and money and achieves no useful purpose. 

To bring about the changes I have here discussed will require 
continuous and concerted effort on the part of leaders in the depart- 
ment and in the colleges and stations. We must needs reach a basis 
for action or secure some sort of uniformity of understanding as to a 
proper starting point. It is believed that this starting point should 
be the adoption of some uniform scheme of organizing our work on 
the basis of projects. We have had this plan in use in the depart- 
ment for several years and it is gradually being improved. We find 
that it has a constant tendency to bring about clear thinking on the 
part of the men. It enables us to secure clear-cut plans for a piece 
of work, supplies officers with numerous plans in order that those 
most important at a given time may be authorized, enables adminis- 
trative officers to check up the plans of leaders and prevent their 
undertaking too much or not undertaking sufficient work, aids mate- 
rially in adjusting relations between administrative officers and proj- 
ect leaders and between project leaders in charge of related phases 
of work, removes in a large measure the opportunities for the duplica- 
tion of work, and serves as a most valuable basis for judgment in the 
appropriation and allotment of funds. The plan, furthermore, is most 
useful in that it protects the prior rights of project leaders and insures 
that proper credit shall go to those workers entitled to the same. It 
has had a material effect in the direction of facilitating cooperation 
and the continuation of work. Our project plan is now so far per- 
fected that we can present to Congress, or to any committee, organiza- 
tion, body of men, or individual, specific statements as to the cost of 
all of our activities. It is also practicable, from these detailed state- 
ments of cost, to prepare a complete budget for any particular bureau 
of the department or for the department as a whole. 



6 AGRICULTURAL COLLEGES AND EXPERIMENT STATIONS. 

Referring to the statement previously made that the laying down 
of principles is comparatively simple and easy and that to make 
them effective is more difficult, it is believed that, in order to effect 
some practical arrangement for developing closer relations on the 
part of the department and the colleges and stations, steps should be 
taken for the appointment of a few committees which might serve a 
very useful purpose in this connection. I offer the suggestion, there- 
fore, that there be appointed (1) a committee on relations of the 
department and the colleges and stations, (2) a committee on proj- 
ects, and (3) a committee on publication of research. I believe 
that all three of the committees here suggested should be made up 
of representatives from the colleges and stations and the department. 

The committee on relations should meet several times a year at 
the call of the Secretary of Agriculture and discuss the broader 
questions of relationship. It should be empowered to arrange from 
time to time meetings of interested workers representing the institu- 
tions involved. These meetings should be for the purpose of enabling 
the related workers to become acquainted, to discuss their respective 
lines of work, and to arrange questions of cooperation through mu- 
tual understandings. It is believed, furthermore, that opportunity 
should be afforded the committee on relations to appear each year 
before congressional committees and present in concrete form the 
progress and work of the colleges and stations at the same time that 
the work of the department is being presented. 

The committee on projects would function in an advisory way, 
first in the development of a plan for unity of action in project state- 
ments for the activities of the colleges, the stations, and the depart- 
ment, so far as these activities relate to research and extension 
service. This committee should also have for its function the bring- 
ing together of the projects of all the institutions involved in order to 
arrange for a system of exchanging projects, similar to the exchange 
system now in vogue in the department between the different bureaus, 
or that may be in vogue in some of the stations between different 
departments of such stations. 

The committee on publication of research should be an editorial 
committee authorized to pass on all research papers submitted for 
publication in the Journal of Agricultural Research recently estab- 
lished. Three members of this committee have already been appointed 
and have assumed charge of the Journal so far as the department is 
concerned, but there should be two additional members, one represent- 
ing the agricultural colleges and another representing the experiment 
stations. It is needless to say that the functions of this committee are 
of the highest importance and that only men known to be thoroughly 
competent to judge properly the actual findings in research should 
serve. 

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